Tenants Face Eviction Despite Council Action : Housing: Residents of Westside complex have been told their units may be demolished. Officials rejected development project two weeks ago.
Tenants at one of the Westside’s last major bastions of moderately priced housing are again facing the threat of eviction, just weeks after they felt the Los Angeles City Council had spared their complex from an upscale renovation plan.
More than 20 residents of the Lincoln Place apartments in Venice have been put on notice by their landlord that their homes could be demolished--a fate that the property owner said is likely for many or all of the garden-style buildings that house about 1,500 people.
Tenants in 16 units, many of them elderly and disabled, vowed to fight the demolition proposal and received support Friday from city housing officials and Councilwoman Ruth Galanter.
“This is just despicable and vindictive,” Galanter said Friday. “There is no good reason for this demolition notice.”
On Sept. 12, Berkeley-based TransAction Properties Ltd. lost a five-year struggle to redevelop the 40-acre complex near Penmar Park. The City Council unanimously rejected the plan to convert 795 units in the 45-year-old complex into 654 market-rate condominiums, 52 other moderately priced condominiums and 144 lower-rent apartments.
Residents said that too much affordable housing would be lost in a community that already has a dearth of low-rent buildings.
“I thought we had it made at the time of that vote. It was 13-0,” said one elderly woman who had received notice of the pending demolition of her two-bedroom apartment. “I think it’s just terrible. I’m devastated.”
The woman huddled Friday afternoon with two other gray-haired residents of the apartments as they exchanged fears about the high cost of moving elsewhere while having to contend with substantial medical bills on their fixed incomes. “We are just scared to death,” said one. “We don’t know what we’ll do.”
The renters said they have not heard from building owners. But officials from the city Housing Department told elderly and disabled tenants that the property owner must pay them $5,000 in relocation assistance if the demolition proceeds. Others would get $2,000 per unit under city law.
The landlords denied that they are seeking a demolition permit from the city in retaliation for the council’s rejection of their redevelopment plan. TransAction Vice President Jim Merlino said tenants have been told for months that the numerous partnerships controlling Lincoln Place would probably develop individual parcels or sell them to other developers.
“The city killed that plan, we believe improperly, and now an owner is exercising the right to demolish a building,” Merlino said, adding that he expected many of the remaining 51 apartment buildings in the complex to be demolished eventually, probably to be replaced with condominiums.
Merlino said residents will lose several of the advantages of the original proposal under piecemeal development: The property could be developed more intensively, current residents will not be guaranteed housing and low-income units will not be constructed.
Galanter said the development of individual parcels within the Lincoln Place complex still faces many hurdles--including an exhaustive city review of proposals to build condominiums.
